OpenAI launches GPT-Realtime for production voice agents

OpenAI announced the general availability of its Realtime API, moving it out of beta and introducing GPT-Realtime as a production-ready speech-to-speech model. The system combines speech recognition, language understanding, and speech synthesis in a single model to reduce latency and improve consistency compared with traditional multi-step pipelines.

The model debuts with higher reasoning performance, scoring 82.8 percent on Big Bench Audio, an increase from 65.6 percent in the previous release. It also provides stronger instruction following, more accurate handling of alphanumerics across multiple languages, and seamless language switching within a conversation. These improvements are aimed at developers building customer service agents, education tools, and voice-driven applications.

OpenAI has also introduced two new voices, Marin and Cedar, while updating its existing set to produce more natural, expressive audio. The release enables applications that need both high fidelity and responsiveness, such as interactive tutors or customer support bots, without relying on a separate chain of transcription and generation models.

For enterprises, GPT-Realtime simplifies infrastructure by offering a single API endpoint for voice input and output. This makes deployment of real-time conversational systems more scalable and reduces integration complexity. By making the Realtime API production-ready, OpenAI is positioning the model as a foundation for voice-first AI applications across industries.